Tory ally who called Auschwitz a labour camp is honoured

One of David Cameron's rightwing allies in eastern Europe was embroiled in controversy today at the Council of Europe in Strasbourg after being allowed to open the assembly's session despite a record of belittling the Holocaust.

Ryszard Bender, a hard-right Polish senator and historian from the rightwing Law and Justice party, has defended a convicted Holocaust denier in Poland, described Auschwitz as "not a death camp, but a labour camp", and campaigned against Polish apologies for the slaughter of Jews at Jedwabne in 1941.

On the eve of Holocaust Remembrance Day tomorrow and commemoration services at Auschwitz on the 65th anniversary of the death camp's liberation, a protest declaration was drafted in Strasbourg demanding that Bender clarify his views.

The Polish senator told the Guardian that he did view Auschwitz as a "death camp" on a par with other Nazi mass murder sites such as Sobibor and Belzec, and said that the accusations against him were "stupid lies".

The parliamentary assembly of the Council of Europe, the human rights body, opened its latest session on yesterday in Strasbourg, with Bender, 78, given the prestigious role of opening the meeting as the oldest and most senior delegate.

He and his party colleagues sit alongside the Tories in the European Democrats Group in the assembly after Cameron last year severed links in the council and in the European parliament with the centre right and Christian Democrats, forming new caucuses with mainly east-European rightwingers.

Bender is a founder member of the extreme-right League of Polish Families, which has been absorbed by the more mainstream Law and Justice party led by twin brothers Jaroslaw and Lech Kaczynski. Bender also sat on the board of the ultra-Catholic Radio Maryja, which is routinely accused of fanning antisemitism and homophobia.

In 2000, Bender appeared on the radio to defend a convicted Holocaust denier, Dariusz Ratajczak, who published a book contending that the gas chambers at Auschwitz were used to disinfect and not to kill inmates.

"Auschwitz was not a death camp, it was a labour camp," Bender said in the radio broadcast. "Jews, Gypsies and others were annihilated there through hard labour. Actually, labour was not always hard and not always were they annihilated." He was condemned by Catholic bishops in Poland, his university employers in Lublin, who termed his remark "noxious", and the concentration camp survivors' association in Poland.

Today Bender told the Guardian that the remark was taken out of context. "I said that this camp [Auschwitz] was a concentration camp, but also a Vernichtungslager [extermination camp]. Practically it was a Vernichtungslager, like Sobibor or Belzec. Practically it was a death camp. That is my opinion."

Zoltan Szabo, a Hungarian socialist leading the protest against Bender in Strasbourg, drafted a declaration stating:

"We are concerned to learn of the ambiguous statements made on Radio Maryja and elsewhere by senator Ryszard Bender who chaired the first part of the session on 25 January.

"We urge Mr Bender to clarify his position and uphold the clear and unequivocal view of the Council of Europe that what happened to Jews on Polish soil was a monstrous crime unprecedented in world history."

Cameron's decision to reposition his party in Europe with Polish and Czech rightwingers has triggered accusations of collaborating with Nazi apologists.

"This is another example," said Denis MacShane, Labour's former Europe minister and delegate to the Strasbourg assembly, "of the embarrassment that Mr Cameron and his new allies cause."